i believe fire opal red coral rising water rising rising moon this is where it is when i am this

“Longing, we say, because desire is fullof endless distances.”

"You are on a rock suspended in a ray of sunlight floating through space. Take a deep breath and relax."

"What goes on inside, is just too fast and huge and all interconnected for words to do more than barely sketch the outlines of at most one tiny little part of it at a given instant." -David Foster Wallace

"It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it’s still here. So get out there...ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much; I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound men and women with their hearts in a safe deposit box, and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this; You will outlive the bastards." --Edward Abbey

Your fairy is called Yarrow Elfwand

She is a cheerful sprite.

She lives close to vixen and badger sets.

She is only seen when the seer holds a four-leafed clover.

She dresses in black and white like a badger. She has delicate green wings like a cicada.

"I don't know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields, which is what I have been doing all day. Tell me, what else should I have done? Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?"

"You don't have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body."

'Freedom is something you assume. Then you wait for someone to try to take it away from you. The degree to which you resist is the degree to which you are free.'

Die when I may, I want it said of me to those who know me best that I have always plucked a thistle and planted a flower where I thought a flower would grow. -Abraham Lincoln

"All that I serve will die, all my delights,the flesh kindled from my flesh, garden and field,the silent lilies standing in the woods,the woods, the hill, the whole earth, allwill burn in man's evil, or dwindlein its own age. Let the world bring on methe sleep of darkness without stars, so I may knowmy little light taken from me into the seedof the beginning and the end, so I may bowto mystery, and take my stand on the earthlike a tree in a field, passing without hasteor regret toward what will be, my lifea patient willing descent into the grass."-Wendell Berry

Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside youAre not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,Must ask permission to know it and be known.The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,I have made this place around you,If you leave it you may come back again, saying Here.No two trees are the same to Raven.No two branches are the same to Wren.If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knowsWhere you are. You must let it find you.-David Wagoner

31 December 2009

26 December 2009

25 December 2009

23 December 2009

this was my eulogy for decades, until i discovered wendell berry:

When I see birches bend to left and right Across the lines of straighter darker trees, I like to think some boy's been swinging them. But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay. Ice-storms do that. Often you must have seen them Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning After a rain. They click upon themselves As the breeze rises, and turn many-coloured As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel. Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal shells Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen. They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load, And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed So low for long, they never right themselves: You may see their trunks arching in the woods Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground, Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair Before them over their heads to dry in the sun. But I was going to say when Truth broke in With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm, I should prefer to have some boy bend them As he went out and in to fetch the cows-- Some boy too far from town to learn baseball, Whose only play was what he found himself, Summer or winter, and could play alone. One by one he subdued his father's trees By riding them down over and over again Until he took the stiffness out of them, And not one but hung limp, not one was left For him to conquer. He learned all there was To learn about not launching out too soon And so not carrying the tree away Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise To the top branches, climbing carefully With the same pains you use to fill a cup Up to the brim, and even above the brim. Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish, Kicking his way down through the air to the ground. So was I once myself a swinger of birches. And so I dream of going back to be. It's when I'm weary of considerations, And life is too much like a pathless wood Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs Broken across it, and one eye is weeping >From a twig's having lashed across it open. I'd like to get away from earth awhile And then come back to it and begin over. May no fate willfully misunderstand me And half grant what I wish and snatch me away Not to return. Earth's the right place for love: I don't know where it's likely to go better. I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more, But dipped its top and set me down again. That would be good both going and coming back. One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

22 December 2009

17 December 2009

13 December 2009

12 December 2009

i learned early on to put back the garnet ring
try and keep the table clean
beta tested bedroom mirror
hiding a broken wing
theres always other garnet elsewhere
books to pile upon the bed
finally finding some space and quiet
to hear me
the incessant gnawing sun shroud
scuttling creature of shipwrecks
bottomfeeder
and the light bolting through the water
and the wide and quiet
and
all the time these lovesongs have been to myself
but spoken to other
because i could not speak to myself
i had been betrayed.
there on the edge of the great quiet
smelling of pine resin cut hay and loam
a shadow plays in puddles of shade
and i know her name.

11 December 2009

page one half. what i do. trying to find a brian eno song and theyre all too ethereal when i want to roll around in the smell of you. hungry. famished. this feeling. the planet shifts and so in me a shift. something deep and true and traveling between the dark and the light. i open the books. i open to energy. the high tide lifts my boat.

i have no oars. i have a picnic hamper and hope in my heart. things coming to a crisis: danger and opportunity. the cone of light tight down on my fused skull like a drill the light makes everything okay.
the first wish in the wishing cup.

i cock my head to the song inside, i catch rags of it when the wind is right. i take my cocktail and try to write it down. this shift. certain as noon. and a broken clocks right twice a day.

hes a grail knight. and that knight chooses to put the grail before him.

10 December 2009

The northern winds have found their home
High above the timberline
But you and I were born to roam
To wander through the whistling pine

Once the summer evening dies
Our love will be of yesterday
One more glance into your eyes
Then we can laugh our love away

Someday youll find out who you are
Someday youll be more than just a shooting star

The road has claimed you for its own
To put your damage on display
With a steel guitar and a microphone
I hope that youll find your way
Someday youll find out who you are
Someday youll be more than just a shooting star

But you wouldnt know it
cause no ones ever showed it, nobody showed it to you
but that doesnt mean it isnt true

Someday youll find out who you are
Someday youll be more than just a shooting star
And maybe then youll realize just how much you meant to me
And maybe someday

You will be free

-Harper Simon

snow. pins against the window. i remind myself to keep supple, to bend so as not to break.

the snow is stiff heavy and wet

the round shard of pottery from a kiln dump in china happy in my pocket at last

amulet of peace and healing

fill the space with light

faith
a clock on the dresser following the sun
the first thing you see when you rise
elephant memory tusks dancing
hearts and flowers
miss you.
faith.

out of the air, Dz. asks what 5 names id name babies, were i to have more. there seems to be a vibe here...
and now in light of a recent lark, i wonder at the jest

you are like a hurricane is playing. you go out and look at the sky. the sky is filled with cold angels. the northern front skims through you a knife in water. you put the song on again. anticipation and ennui. someones fingers drumming somewhere above their head fly cold angels. the sound is cold feet to the frozen street late in the afternoon when the sky goes out. hands in pockets lonesome head to heart falling forward into slick gloom. the lights come on in other peoples houses. cold death of the Earth you huddle near the hearthfire smoke breathed out into the room like a woman with a cigarette. kuala lampur in monsoon. breathing dense and sickly scented. your skin grooved like a brain. the sky unfamiliar colors pulsing and flowing through you. the birds should be getting suet soon, bring wood in to warm before burning. deep inside something stirs.

08 December 2009

*****needs attention too
*****needs to lose 20 pounds
*****needs to hurry up and give birth
*****needs to finish her latest novel, and make it very good
*****needs a lifeboat, but this is largely her own doing

it is a pilgrimage of sorts. of being blessed amid constraints, of finding beauty in a broken world

thats the best we can do

let our light

shine

down the coast ill cast my light
sketched out gluestick packing tape east coast mementos
trailing back toward home
kites of love
with tales of ink and pigment
lovesongs scratched out at redlight badcoffee crossroads
ill draw the horizon
the truckstop
the song in my head
i promise.

it occurs to me: how well did the surge work for us when we applied it to people who had no real pressing beef with us?

with all due respect, sir, we had our maximus handed to us. how well do you suppose itll go over when applied to people who have sincerely committed to our annihilation? i think thats what i tried to say in my first email. its throwing good money after bad, except our money is blood.

i knew afghanistan would be a bramble hydra hedge for you before we crowned you.

05 December 2009

the moon a low egg opening the night a rose monsoon

my face is open and many times laughing under the sky a flannel left long in the creekwater

i invest in secret projections youre between rainbow and transcendent resolution and tarot rainfall and time i am no empress but priestess one after the mage i am threshold angel gatekeeper
artemis mary hekate changing woman
something keeps me up these nights craving cold earth smell cheeks glowing with moon and tomorrow
i send sage breath and circle light to you
to you.

play cypress play something with no words at all the rest i leave unsaid

03 December 2009

cold blue dusk december eve 2am vertigo clouds its warm naked water warm my hands open trying to catch signals. crows low above the road the light a bright cream smudge at the ridgeline last rain on bulbs buried for resurrection. many people looked at me and smiled i wish i knew why it would make all this easier.

desert sunset candle and white sage red wine again unicorn asylum in a raintree while pricking demons pull up rail ties and sever telegraph cord. when sentries are set at the perimeters, my crossed crusaders appear deep within the infrastructure. the wooshing helps me remember my meds. i cant believe anything nice theyd have to say, except maybe from you.

"And if the question were asked: What is more real, the mundane or the sublime? most would hesitate before they gave an answer. On the one side, details: say, the aftermath of a breakfast, dirty chipped plates in the sink, their rims encrusted with egg yolk. Against this, the unnameable: small aching heart with boasts, what can you know? Outside the cage of everything we ever heard or saw, beyond, outside, above, there lies the real, hiding as long as we shall live, there stretch and trail the millions of names of God burning across the eons. When all through this our end will come before we even know the names of us.

"Love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is done well." -V.V.G.

"The perfection of the Absolute where all Becoming stops and pure Being, immutable, timeless, unchanging, hangs forever like a ripe peach upon the bough."-E.A.

"...and the whole incident was incredibly frazzling and angst-rod and filled almost a whole mead notebook and is here recounted in only its barest psycho-skeletal outline." -D.F.W."At the top of the mountain, we are all snow leopards." -H.S.T.

"Cometh a voice: My children, hear; From the crowded street and the close-packed mart I call you back with my message clear, back to my lap and my loving heart. Long have ye left me, journeying on by range and river and grassy plain, to the teeming towns where the rest have gone - come back, come back to my arms again. So shall ye lose the foolish needs that gnaw your souls; and my touch shall serve to heal the fretted nerve. Treading the turf that ye once loved well, instead of the stones of the city's street, ye shall hear nor din nor drunken yell, but the wind that croons in the ripening wheat. I that am old have seen long since ruin of palaces made with hands for the soldier-king and the priest and prince whose cities crumble in desert sands. But still the furrow in many a clime yields softly under the ploughman's feet; still there is seeding and harvest time, and the wind still croons in the ripening wheat. The works of man are but little worth; for a time they stand, for a space endure; but turn once more to your mother - Earth, my gifts are gracious, my works are sure. Instead of the strife and pain I give you peace, with its blessing sweet. Come back, come back to my arms again, for the wind still croons in the ripening wheat." -John Sandes, The Earth-Mother (excerpt, 1918)